I went immersed myself in the study looking for the very source of ‘Chakra-Wheel Ideology’ in India, searching into vast internet space.
What it arrived at was the Andronovo culture, which was spread mainly in what is now southern Russia. In the village of Sintashta, the oldest spoked-wheel chariot dating around 2000 BC has been found which dates back 500-700 years from the Rig Veda’s age.
The Andronovo dead were buried in timber or stone chambers under both round and rectangular kurgans (tumuli). Burials were accompanied by livestock, wheeled vehicles, cheek-pieces for horses, and weapons, ceramics and ornaments. Among the most notable remains are the burials of chariots, dating from around 2000 BC and possibly earlier. The chariots are found with paired horse-teams, and the ritual burial of the horse in a “head and hooves” cult has also been found. Some Andronovo dead were buried in pairs, of adults or adult and child.
Wikipedia “Andronovo culture“
There, the burial of a nobleman was accompanied by a chariot and the horse that pulled it, showing how important this chariot was to them. Perhaps it was a wish that the souls of the dead would ride the Ratha chariot to the divine heavens.
This chariot burial is thought to be the ancestral form of the Ashva Medha (horse worship ritual), which flourished among the Indo-Aryans during the Vedic period. The Ashva Madha was taken over by the subsequent Indian dynasties as a ritual symbolizing a truly great king and is still remained in the famous name ‘Dashashwamedh (Ten Ashva Medhas) Ghats’ of Varanasi.
The people of Sintashta are credited with being the developers of mankind’s first wooden spoked wheel. Whereas earlier wheels were mere disk made of planks heavy and sluggish, the spoked wheel was a revolutionary technology that was light, highly balanced and rigid. It is said to be one of the greatest inventions that revolutionised human civilisation.
And it is precisely this ancient, spoked wheel that was the very source of the ‘holy Chakra’ philosophy which has been carried down to the present day in India.
Driving this nimble chariot with these new-type wheels, the Aryans marched west, east, south and north at breakneck speed. It was comparable to the ‘British Empire where never sun sets‘ in modern times. As evidence, all of Europe, including Russia, with the exception of Finland was governed by the Indo-European language family, the same language as the Aryan Vedas, showing the extent of their dominance and influence.
Traces of this are preserved in the treaty documents of the Hittites, who are renowned as the founders of iron manufacture. The treaty partner, Mitanni, was ruled by a warrior class who believed in Vedic deities such as Indra. The very source of their military power would be the Ratha chariots.
Some theonyms, proper names and other terminology of the Mitanni exhibit similarities to Indo-Aryan or Proto-Aryan. Several Mitanni rulers had names which could be interpreted as Indo-Aryan, most notably Shuttarna. The deities Mitra, Varuna, Indra, and Nasatya (Ashvins) are listed and invoked in two treaties found in Hattusa, between the kings Sattiwaza of Mitanni and Suppiluliuma the Hittite: (treaty KBo I 3) and (treaty KBo I 1 and its duplicates).
Kikkuli’s horse training text includes technical terms such as aika (eka, one), tera (tri, three), panza (pancha, five), satta (sapta, seven), na (nava, nine), vartana (vartana, turn, round in the horse race). The numeral “aika” (one) is of particular importance because it places the loanwords in the vicinity of Indo-Aryan proper as opposed to Indo-Iranian or early Iranian (which has “aiva”) in general. Annelies Kammenhuber (1968) suggested that this vocabulary was derived from the still undivided Indo-Iranian language, but Mayrhofer has shown that specifically Indo-Aryan features are present.
Another text has babru (babhru, brown), parita (palita, grey), and pinkara (pingala, red). Their chief festival was the celebration of the solstice (vishuva) which was common in most cultures in the ancient world. The Mitanni warriors were called marya, the term for warrior in Sanskrit as well; note mišta-nnu (= miẓḍha,~ Sanskrit mīḍha) “payment (for catching a fugitive).”
Wikipedia “Mitanni”
They swept over all of Europe directly and indirectly with their superior material civilisation (in short, military power itself), and their influence extended to the Orient too. And it is also the Ratha chariot with spoked wheels, that was the catalyst for the dramatic development of the ancient urban civilisations around the Mediterranean.
Ancient Egyptian wall paintings of roughly the same period as the Rig Veda show that, in contrast to the ten spokes of the Sintashta, the wheels developed in this region mainly had six spokes. The number of six spokes seems to have been an ultimate balance between the limits of the technical capabilities at the time and the rationality of the structural mechanics. Such high-tech Ratha chariots must have been a major driving force behind the expansion of ancient Egyptian royal power.
Among other things, I couldn’t help but feel a shiver run up my back when I discovered the ruins of Arkaim around 1600 BC, left behind by the Aryans who had moved eastwards. The aerial photographs showed the remains of a settlement in the shape of a magnificent circling Chakra design. I could even make out a faint, spoke-like radiating pattern there.
The site has been identified by researchers as the oldest Indo-Aryan remains of a city, and the local Russian press has sensationalised it with the name ‘Swastika City’ or ‘Mandala City’.
However, no matter how one looked at it, it was more appropriate to call it a ‘Chakra-Wheel city’ rather than a swastika or mandala.
Having taken the superiority of the spoked wheel and the Ratha chariot as their ethnic identity, they probably built their own base cities in imitation of that wheel-chakra design.
This must be the furthest source of the Indian Chakra philosophy that can be ascertained, so I was convinced.
At last, I’ve arrived at what is probably the oldest original landscape of the Indian Stick-Rotating technique, I thought.
The Sintashta culture is regarded as the origin of the Indo-Iranian languages. The earliest known chariots have been found in Sintashta burials, and the culture is considered a strong candidate for the origin of the technology, which spread throughout the Old World and played an important role in ancient warfare. Sintashta settlements are also remarkable for the intensity of copper mining and bronze metallurgy carried out there, which is unusual for a steppe culture.
From alhetron.com
Around 2000 BC, somewhere in the Great Plains stretching from present-day Ukraine to southern Russia, north of the Caucasus Mountains, a nomadic ethnic group calling themselves the Aryan succeeded in developing the Wooden Spoked Wheel. Its technological superiority, both as a military force and as a means of transport, allowed them to expand their power in the surrounding area.
Probably with the development of the Ratha Chariot with spoked wheels, the tactics of shooting arrows in rapid succession from galloping chariots were also developed simultaneously.
They left Chariot Burial at Sintashta and Chakra City at Arkaim, and one of their offshoots eventually made its way to the southeast while conquering other ethnic groups and accumulating power. This is thought to be the ancestor of the Vedic people, the Indo-Aryans.
Apparently, they had a strong longing for the eastern heavenly land where the sun rises. This is well expressed in the Rig Veda hymn dedicated to Ushas, the god of dawn in red light.
Rig Veda 1.48.3
uvāsoṣā ucchāc ca nu devī jīrā rathānām | ye asyā ācaraṇeṣu dadhrire samudre na śravasyavaḥ ||
Wisdom Library
The divine Uṣas has dwelt (in heaven of old); may she dawn today, the excitress of chariots which are harnessed at her coming, as those who are desirous of wealth (send ships) to sea.
For them, the ethnic identity was the Ratha chariot, and the spoked wheel, the source of their superiority over other peoples, was a glorious symbol.
The power of the chariot that rushes across the battlefield like a raging torrent along with the beautiful design of its rotating spoked wheels was superimposed on the power of radiating sun moving in the sky. Eventually, the image of the Sun God Surya travelling across the sky on his Ratha chariot was created there.
It is likely that their longing for the eastern sky, the sun’s birthplace and source of power and abundance, drove them to further expeditions to the east.
After crossing the Khyber Pass, the Aryans finally entered the Indian subcontinent around 1500 BC. The native peoples targeted for the invasion had no choice but to succumb helplessly before the power of their high-performance Ratha chariots.
For the Aryans, the Ratha chariot became increasingly important as a symbol of the great conqueror, as the source of wealth from plunder, and above all as the symbol of great divine authority. The manifestation of this is none other than the gods in the Rig Veda who ride throughout the sky realm on Ratha chariots.
Indra as the god of thunder is also easier to understand if we consider that it is the result of combined images of a roaring chariot racing across the earth and a terrifying thunderbolt rumbling across the sky.
And because of the divine power and design similarity shared by the Surya Chakra and the Ratha Chakra, the idea of the sacred Chakra (wheel), which symbolises both the great warrior king (warrior god) and the power of the great Surya god, was established here.
I guess that it was the very beginning of
“India The Land of Holy Chakra”.
Far beyond time, when Lord Vishnu eventually emerged dominantly from the multitude of sun-gods, the Idea of the sacred chakra wheel was incorporated as the Sudarshan Chakra in association with Krishna, and later became Buddha’s Dharma Chakra, breaking out in a pan-Indian subcontinental scale.
However, in the time of the Rig Veda, the Chakras were merely symbols of transcendental nature deities and military power. Transcendental though it was, in a sense, merely a symbol of ‘power’.
It had to wait for the rise of indigenous culture for that to take on a truly spiritual sanctity and shine brilliantly in the Indian world.
The history up to this point has all been told from the perspective of the invading Aryans. How, on the other hand, did the Dravidian and other indigenous peoples accept and internalise the overwhelming invasion, symbolised by the warrior god Indra? Here lies another key to the mystery of the sacred Chakra ideologies.
~to be continued~
INDIA~The Land of Holy Chakra 